an open mind : about canadian law & professionalism

On April 30, 2015, lawyers in Ontario will exercise their duty to elect Benchers of the Law Society. Bencher elections have historically seen glacial changes in the complement of Convocation, the governing council of Ontario’s legal profession. As in many elections featuring low voter turn-out, incumbent candidates tend to say little of substance in their campaigns and…

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After the last Law Society Bencher election, four years ago, rumours abounded that one candidate had spent over $100,000 in campaign expenses. This time around, there is a lot of talk about opening up the Law Society’s leadership to more diverse candidates. The fact remains that, like any other form of politics, money plays a part in the democratic process. If you get an email from a bencher candidate, or a post card in the office mail, don’t immediately delete it or throw it in the blue bin. First, think how much it cost to get that email or admail…

On February 21, I participated in the panel debate on Alternative Business Structures (ABS) at the plenary CBA meetings in Ottawa, for which I had provided my preliminary speaking notes on this blog. I left the debate feeling there is no business plan for allowing non-lawyers and corporations to share in the delivery of legal services: in…

“Everything you want to know about ABS but are afraid to ask.” That is the name of the panel discussion at the Mid-Winter Meeting of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) on February 21, in which CBA has asked me to represent a skeptic’s perspective on the Alternative Business Structures (ABS) recommendations of the CBA Futures Committee.…

As readers of the OBA’s Just Magazine may have figured out, Jeremy Martin’s Aimless in Articling and my Big Law Blues were solicited as a tag team, one from a new lawyer’s perspective and one from the Quarter-Century Club. Based on the feedback so far, it was a successful pairing. Extract from Big Law Blues: The social and economic…

According to the Wikipedia entry on depictions of Muhammad “In Islam, although nothing in the Qur’an explicitly bans images, some supplemental hadith explicitly ban the drawing of images of any living creature; other hadith tolerate images, but never encourage them. Hence, most Muslims avoid visual depictions of Muhammad or any other prophet such as Moses…

Virk revokes ministerial approval of twu’s j.d. program Opponents of Trinity Western University (TWU) in its bid to open a law school celebrated earlier this month when, on December 11, 2014, the British Columbia Minister of Advanced Education, Amrik Virk, revoked Trinity Western University’s authorization to grant undergraduate law degrees (J.D.). He explained his decision as follows: Based on the current situation, I have decided to revoke my approval of the proposed law school at Trinity Western University. This means the university cannot enroll any students in its proposed program. The current uncertainty over the status of the regulatory body approval means…